


literal and metaphorical

by sapphire_child



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Community: doctor_rose_fix, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-30
Updated: 2011-06-30
Packaged: 2019-01-27 23:33:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12593020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphire_child/pseuds/sapphire_child
Summary: Two times the swimming pool was in the library before Eleven’s regeneration. One literal, the other mostly metaphorical.





	literal and metaphorical

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://doctor-rose-fix.livejournal.com/195335.html?thread=4583687#t4583687) at the [](https://doctor-rose-fix.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](https://doctor-rose-fix.dreamwidth.org/)**doctor_rose_fix** summer ficathon.
> 
> Ten/Rose or Nine/Rose + the swimming pool in the library.

Of all the strange and many things Rose Tyler had seen on her travels with the Doctor, the TARDIS still had to be one of the biggest enigmas of all. She was prone to rearranging her rooms without warning, like something out of Hogwarts. Fine if you were up for a mini adventure on your way to the console room – not so great when you were dead tired and your room wasn’t where you’d left it.

And then there was the way she seemed to lose power – always just when you’d started applying mascara or sat down on the loo. The emergency lighting was a bit dicky too, and the emergency escape buttons were all too easy to press by mistake when you were fumbling about blind. Three times now Rose had accidentally jettisoned herself into the Vortex – most recently sending herself hurtling back to medieval France. She’d spent a day and a half hiding inside the equivalent of an alien port-a-potty before the Doctor managed to track her down and rescue her.

 _He_ wouldn’t hear a word against his magnificent ship of course.

“She’s a bit rundown isn’t she?” Rose complained, nursing a burn she had just received from a faulty power socket in the galley. “Seems like there’s just...stuff everywhere. All the time.”

“Oi!” the Doctor patted the nearest wall soothingly before glaring properly at Rose. “I’d like to see you try and keep up maintenance on a ship this big all by yourself!”

“Might help if she stopped moving stuff around,” Rose muttered, feeling particularly mutinous as she sucked on her burned finger. “Bet it takes up heaps of power.”

The Doctor shrugged. “Makes things more interesting. Just be glad the gravity stabilisers are in good nick at the moment. Nothing quite like waking up with a face full of ceiling...”

He grinned at the face she pulled then but he certainly wasn’t laughing a week or so later when they were holed up in the library together. Rose was pawing through a collection of magazines from all corners of the universe and the Doctor was reading who knows what when she heard it.

The TARDIS made all sorts of strange noises – from the grating noise of the engines to the musical humming that seemed to come from somewhere within the very heart of the ship. Even the occasional gurgle of water could be heard running along the pipes and tubes on the floor. But never outside of a bathroom had Rose heard the sound of water trickling and splashing and...

She knelt up in her chair and swivelled, hunting for the source when a large droplet unceremoniously splashed the side of her nose. Wiping at her face, slowly, slowly she looked up and gaped wordlessly. There was a small waterfall splashing merrily from the ceiling, hitting the nearest shelves and trickling down the books.

“Doctor,” she croaked, and when she didn’t receive an answer she looked over her shoulder at him. “Doctor it’s raining.” She waved a vague hand at the stacks but the Doctor, engrossed in his work, didn’t even look up. Starting to get a little peeved, Rose tried again. “Doctor, it’s _raining_.”

He looked up, seemingly a little bit cross at having been interrupted. “What’re you wittering on about now?” he wanted to know. Rolling her eyes, Rose indicated the sheet of water that was by now cascading down behind her chair.

“It’s _raining_.”

The Doctor was still for a moment, agog, before he gave a cry of dismay and strode across the room, skirting her chair. Rose watched in amazement as he scaled the sodden bookshelf, hanging off it with one arm so he could wave his sonic at the roof.

“It’s the swimming pool,” he realised. “She’s tried to move it and it’s sprung a leak...I’m going to have to go upstairs to fix this – hell, hell hell...oi, don’t just stand there!” he added peevishly as he jumped down from the bookshelf. “Move some of those books before they get completely drenched! Chop chop!”

Grumbling, Rose acquiesced. When the Doctor returned to the library however, the scene was even more chaotic than the one he’d left.

The water was roiling and swirling in ankle deep waves. Periodicals and picture books bumped about like flotsam and jetsam, ancient scrolls became seaweed and waterlogged furniture sagged forlornly under the weight of water.

“What happened?” the Doctor asked, wide eyed when he found Rose. She was drenched, mascara puddling beneath her eyes and a ruined magazine still clutched in her hand.

“M’thinking the swimming pool emptied itself into the library.” she said acidly, wringing the hem of her hoodie out for the umpteenth time. “So well done on whatever you did to try and fix it.”

The Doctor studied his sonic a little closer and his face clouded with guilt.

“Ah.” He said finally. “Wrong setting. Sorry.”

Rose glared at him.

“I said sorry!” he grumbled but she continued glaring.

“This happen often?” she demanded, wiping a stray bookmark out of her hair. “Swimming pool in the library?”

“Never happened before,” the Doctor assured her but then couldn’t help cracking a grin. “You look like a drowned rat.”

Already cross, Rose turned sarcastic. “ _Thanks._ ”

“Oh c’mere,” the Doctor held out his arms and began picking his way across the ruins of his library towards her.”I’ll piggyback you out.”

“What about the books?” Rose asked, slightly mollified and willing to concede to an apology in the form of a hug. She dripped all over his jacket as he carried her out, rivulets easily finding the worn creases in the leather. Her shoes were heavy with water, sodden really as they banged up against his legs but he didn’t complain.

“They can wait a mo’,” he said simply. “Books are replaceable.”

Rose grinned at the unsaid, _you aren’t_ , and pressed her cheek against the side of his head in the closest approximation of a hug she could muster whilst clinging to his back.

“Your hair’s dripping down my neck,” the Doctor complained but there wasn’t really a hint of complaint in his voice and Rose only laughed and pressed herself even closer.

 

 

 

“Did you know there are bathrobes in the swimming pool now?”

“What?” the Doctor asked wearily. He looked up from between his hands but hardly even took in the sight of Rose who had entered the library with the previous, perfunctory remark.

“Bathrobes,” she repeated, indicating the buttercup yellow towelling she was wearing. “Just as well really cos she stole my bathers the minute I hung them up to dry...”

“Hngh.” the Doctor affirmed, letting his head sink back between his hands.

“Sorry,” Rose’s voice drawled, amused. “Am I boring you?”

The Doctor shook his head and grumbled a response that may have been negative.

“You gotta headache?”

He smiled wryly into his hands.

“Something like that.” Letting out a soft exhalation, he sat back in the chair. “I think I’m just tired.”

“You get tired?” Rose sounded surprised, and very close. Glancing sideways revealed that she had knelt down next to his chair and was now leaning on the arm, chin propped up and head tilted slightly.

“Course I get tired. Doesn’t everybody?”

“Yeah but not you. You’re normally...I dunno. Like the Energiser bunny on crack or something.”

The Doctor chuckled and huddled down a little more into the chair.

“You should sleep. If you’re tired.”

“It’s not my body that’s tired,” he explained wearily, gesturing to the table in front of him. It was covered in open books and page after page of his own untidy Gallifreyan scratchings. “It’s my brain. Been looking over this stuff for days trying to work it through...”

Curious, Rose pushed herself to her feet and had a bit of a look over his work.

“What is it?” she asked, tracing a circle with her fingers.

“Gallifreyan Algebra,” he said dryly, smiling when Rose made a face and quickly replaced the page she had been scrutinising. “Or at least the equivalent to what you know it as I suppose. Just trying to figure out some schematics for recalibrating the TARDIS. Lot harder now than it ever has been. Part of the reason why we never seem to land in the right place.”

“So it’s like...mechanical stuff.”

He shrugged. “Something like that.”

Rose nodded and leant back against the desk, her arms crossed. “You should get some sleep. You look rubbish.”

“Don’t much fancy sleeping,” he told her and when she waited expectantly for a reason, he grimaced and merely said, “Bad dreams.”

“Still?” she said and then, when he nodded, “Well come on then, budge up.” She gently pressed a toe to his calf muscle and continued poking until the Doctor moved along enough for her to squeeze in beside him on the chair. Once there, she flung her legs over his lap and curled into him without a sign of hesitation.

“Quite comfortable there are you?” he asked, bemused.

“Are you?” she retaliated and he could hear the smile in her voice.

Fondly, he pressed a kiss to her hair and then did his best to settle down to try and have a proper rest. His body however, had other ideas. As worn out as his brain was (and even that in itself was a strange occurrence) his body was far too wired to let him fully relax. Rose had the opposite problem it seemed – she had already relaxed into a light doze, completely content in his embrace.

Humans, the Doctor thought fondly, even as he searched for something to do with his hands that wouldn’t disturb her. Chancing upon the back of her hand he explored the delicate wrist joint carefully before letting his hand slip up the sleeve of her bathrobe and onto her forearm. She shifted slightly in his arms and he held fast, gently palpating until he could feel the solid press of bone beneath flesh. When she didn’t stir again he inched his arm even further until it was completely lost up her sleeve, his fingertips easily making it to her shoulder where he discovered a small, soft protrusion.

“What you doing?” Rose mumbled sleepily into his chest. In answer, he drew a circle around the anomaly.

“Is this a mole?”

Rose was silent for a moment, fuddled by sleep and his odd question. “Yeah’ve always had it.”

“I never noticed.”

“Lots of things you don’t notice,” Rose said and he felt her grinning as she wormed an arm in behind his back, finding the mole between his shoulder blades. “We match.”

“We do.” He agreed.

“Sleep.” Rose suggested, patting his chest with a sleep clumsy hand.

He’d already put his arm around her when she sat on his lap and now he relaxed and let himself cuddle her properly. He nestled his cheek against her chemically scented hair – still damp from her swim and let his tired brain do one last bit of cataloguing before he close down into sleep. It was just such an odd sensory contrast – the swimming pool in the library. But it was comforting to have her in his arms smelling warm and alive and like home.

He slept dreamlessly with her in his arms.


End file.
